Man, Am I in Love with My New Header

Wow. Michael Sigenthaler of Skitsbox made me the fabulous header above; this is one of several that I’ll be able to rotate out. I love it, I love it, I love it. I changed the theme to match it better, but, as you will note, all the familiar widgets remain on the right hand side. Wow. This is so nice.

The only downside is that I spent so much time tweaking my blog’s look that I have little time left to write this morning. Or, rather, I’ve hunched over the computer with only my wrists and fingers moving for about as long as I can stand. So if I get to writing a review today, it will be in a few hours, after running around and doing quite a bit of yoga.

In other news, I started taking two amino acids, tyrosine and taurine; I’ll let you know how that goes. I’ve been taking a multivitamin and essential fatty acids for a couple of weeks, and I can’t really tell if they’re helping. I suspect that the only way I’ll know is by subtle changes in my mood scores over time.

Speaking of mood tracking, I’m still using Optimism software to track moods, and I do like it — it’s easy to use, but collects a lot of valuable information over time — it’s a lot less burdensome than filling out forms manually. The only real disadvantage is that it seems intended to track unipolar depression; you would have to customize it a lot to keep records on mania. I have so little mania, though, that this isn’t a real problem for me. Now that I think about it, it would also be nice if you could create separate pages for depression and anxiety, since the latter cripples me nearly as much as the former.

Other updates: I’m making good progress in writing my Wellness Recovery Action Plan, though it is pretty time-consuming, and I’d prefer to be doing it by hand (I’m a hard copy kind of girl). I’ve been shifting antidepressants, and if I can ever get logged on, I’ll review the user website for Pristiq, the new one. It should be a bit of a hoot. Oh, and I’ve updated my “About” page, for those of you who would like a few more biographical details.

Revolt and Resignation

In his collection of essays On Aging, Holocaust survivor Jean Amery said that one must meet the phenomenon of aging -- inevitable yet terrifying -- with both revolt and resignation. So it is with mental illness. To deny that I will always be manic-depressive would be true madness; at the same time, I must revolt against my condition, rejecting the idea that it defines and limits me.